Resident Evil 7: Biohazard saw a reinvention of the beloved franchise. Since the first release in the 1990s, the series has produced myriad main series titles, sub-titles, spin-offs, films, arcade cabinets, and more, and it is no stranger to mixing things up and trying something new. Having wandered a bit from its survival horror roots, RE7: Biohazard was a return to form, focusing less on action and more on survival, but shifting to a first-person perspective and arguably incorporating VR better than any game of its generation. Given the game’s commercial and critical success, Capcom had big expectations to fill for its follow-up.
Resident Evil 4 was the first main title to majorly shift the direction of the franchise, ditching the fixed camera angles for an over-the-shoulder perspective that complemented the shift toward more action-oriented horror. Resident Evil Village is somewhat analogous, keeping the first-person perspective of Resident Evil 7, but implementing a few key changes, upping the pace and the action, and introducing new types of enemies that breathe fresh air into the series without straying too far from what’s considered acceptable for a Resident Evil title. The echoes of Resident Evil 4 are immediately apparent, and even the first major mission of the game can be seen as a subtle nod to the 2005 entry, with the protagonist finding himself in an unfamiliar village, and the player tasked with surviving for a set (and invisible) amount of time.
Resident Evil Village deserves both praise and criticism for taking the formula of RE7 and upping the action. There is an inescapable feeling that the world could have used a few more horror-oriented Resident Evil games, and Capcom could have gone in a few different directions, instead choosing to aim straight for the formula that worked for Resident Evil 4. It is undeniable, however, that they knocked it out of the park with Village.
The game is intense and frightening compared to RE7’s atmospheric, anxiety-inducing slow burn, while the plot goes completely bonkers in the way only Resident Evil can. On that front, the decision to keep shoehorning old Resident Evil characters into newer stories tends to weaken the individual plots of the games, and this is no exception, with narrative threads and twists often feeling contrived, placed more to shift the series back to popular characters rather than resolve the story started in Resident Evil 7.
